Sylvia Smith

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Smith: she was praised for recalling the tiny details of life that others might overlook as uninteresting and unimportant Paul Hackett for The Times

Last updated at 12:01AM, March 11 2013

Former secretary who had a surprise literary hit with a deadpan chronicle on her life of temporary jobs and faltering romances

Sylvia Smith was an unlikely literary star. A former secretary, she was in her forties when she wrote the first of a series of semi-autobiographical books, which recounted the banalities of her day-to-day life in London, from temporary jobs and nascent romances, to bedsit tenants and nights at the social club.

Her first published book was the semi-autobiographical Misadventures (2001), which recounted the first 50 years of Smith’s life, spent simply and unremarkably. Her publisher Canongate described it as “deadpan Bridget Jones for the middle-aged”, a book Smith said she had not read. In fact, she had hardly read at